Carlyle in an eloquent passage cries out in his passionate way: "Might and Right do differ frightfully from hour to hour; but give them centuries to try it in, they are found to be identical. Whose land _was_ this of Britain? God's who made it, His and no other's it was and is. Who of God's creatures had a right to live in it? The wolves and bisons? Yes, they; till one with a better right showed himself. The Celt, 'aboriginal savage of Europe,' as a snarling antiquary names him arrived, pretending to have a better right, and did accordingly, not without pain to the bisons, make good the same. He had a better right to that piece of God's land; namely, a better might to turn it to use--a might to settle himself there and try what use he could turn it to. The bisons disappeared; the Celts took possession and tilled." Interpreting this passage as one written in the true frenzy of prophecy, two things seem to me to take clear shape in the future outlook of the housing question. In the first place, it would seem that it will have to be settled by a Celt, and in the second place it will not be achieved "without pain to the bisons." One would have thought that a better plan would be a small business parliamentary committee of all interests with power to enforce their decrees against owners and corporate bodies. Something permanent is necessary, akin to the Imperial Defence Committee, which knows no party politics. Are we not here in the face of a real danger to the nation? Already endeavours have been made to take this matter out of the common rut of party politics, but these efforts have not been altogether successful, and if the matter is not settled soon there would seem nothing for it but a forcible solution and a merry set-to between the Celt and the bison, in which we may expect the Celt will get the better of the bison but we cannot be sure that the poor will get all they need even from the Celt. CHAPTER XIII THE TWO PUBLIC HOUSES 1. THE ALEHOUSE. Judged by no o'er-zealous rigour Much this mystic throng expresses; Bacchus was the type of vigour And Silenus of excesses. LONGFELLOW: "Drinking Song." Whatever you may think about it you cannot travel from Charing Cross to Dijon through the hop-fields of Kent to the vineyards of the Cote-d'Or without admitting that whether the vine be a gift of good or evil it has come to stay. Bacchus is still full of vigour and has as many followers as ever. But the law has nothing to say to Bacchus. The law is after old Silenus. It lures him into a den and makes him drunk and then locks him up, and the holy Willies wag their heads at his shame and collect money for his reformation.